Adilynne Anne Evans was born Saturday July 21, 2012 at 4:54 pm. She was 6 pounds 5 ounces and 19 inches long. I had quite the experience while getting her here.
Friday July 20 I started having contractions while David and I were watching the movie War Horse. The contractions were 8-10 minutes apart. We went to bed at about midnight and at that point my contractions had slowed down. I woke up at 2:00 am with painful contractions that were about 5-6 minutes apart. I got out of bed and got on the computer to check Facebook and my blog to distract me. By 3:00 am my contractions were 4-5 minutes apart and I was in so much pain that I was throwing up. I went and woke David up and he took a quick shower while I got ready to leave for the hospital. I had planned on getting showered and doing my hair and makeup but once I was having labor pains I didn't want to do anything besides get to the hospital and get an epidural.
At 4:00 am I called my midwife to see if it was time to head to the hospital. She told me yes and that she would see me in a little while. We got to LDS hospital at about 5:00 am. I got my robe on and went through the check in procedures with the nurse. At first I think she was going to send us home but when she got the monitors hooked up to me she realized how close my contractions were. She knew that I wanted an epidural so she started getting everything ready for that. When the nurse told me that I needed to have an IV with fluids for 30 minutes before they could do the epidural I was wondering how I was going to make it for another 30 minutes with the contraction pains. Luckily the time went pretty quickly. I think it was about 8:00 am when the anesthesiologist came into my room and gave me the epidural. The anesthesiologist was excellent and I could move my legs throughout the rest of my labor but I couldn't feel any of the labor pains.
Once I had the epidural I progressed pretty quickly. At one point my midwife and the nurse thought I would deliver the baby by 1:00. Unfortunately that wasn't the case. At about 11:30 they thought I was fully dilated so they started having me push. Nothing was happening so they checked me again. The nurse realized that I actually wasn't fully dilated, my cervix was just extremely thin. They had me lay on my side for about 45 minutes and then I was finally fully dilated. After that they had me just lay in bed to let the baby drop and descend more on her own.
By 1:15 pm it was time to start pushing. I pushed for two hours but the baby wasn't descending down the birth canal. My midwife had the on-call OB/GYN come and check me. Right before he came in the room the nurse and my midwife could feel that the baby was face up instead of being face down. They also saw meconium in my fluids which meant that the baby could be in distress. The OB/GYN confirmed the baby's position and told my midwife to keep having me push for another 30 minutes and he would come in and check me again. He said that if the baby hadn't descended after another 30 minutes he would try and deliver the baby with the forceps. This made me really nervous and I pushed as hard as I could for the next 30 minutes to try and get the baby out. When the doctor came in again the baby still hadn't descended more.
The doctor had his nurses come in and the NICU nurses came in to take care of the baby if they needed to because of the meconium. It went from only 4 people in my labor and delivery room to at least 12. I started bawling at this point while they got everything ready to use the forceps. The doctor had me push through three of my contractions while he pulled with the forceps. Even with all of this the baby still wasn't moving. My midwife and the doctor decided that the only way they were going to get the baby here safely was to do a c-section.
After 14 hours of labor and pushing for 3 hours I had to go through a c-section. David and I were both really emotional at this point. They took us into the operating room and performed the c-section. David was holding my hand and comforting me the whole time. When they got the baby out they told us that she was even fighting to come out with the c-section. She wanted to stay inside of me. Once the nurses got the baby and checked her quickly they told David he could go see his daughter. The nurses got her cleaned up, weighed, measured, and wrapped up and let David bring her over to me.
She was so beautiful. She was calm and looking around and blowing bubbles with her mouth. Once they finished my c-section they took me back to my labor and delivery room. I was there for about an hour and then they took me to my postpartum room. My parents and brother had been at the hospital all day and were very excited to see the new baby. David's mom got to the hospital shortly after I got into my postpartum room. Unfortunately David's dad was working in North Dakota and didn't get to see her until she was a week and a half old.
My dad, brother and mom with Adilynne
David's mom with Adilynne
We stayed in the hospital until Wednesday morning. We were ready to get out of there by then! Once we signed all the discharge papers we got Adilynne dressed and in the car seat. We gathered all our stuff and headed out. When we got to the front desk of the maternity floor the nurses stopped us and told us we couldn't leave without an escort. Oops! We just wanted to get out of there. The CNA came up to the desk quickly and we were on our way.
Home at last!
The first week at home was kind of rough. Adilynne wasn't sleeping very good, I was exhausted and I felt like I never had time to do anything for myself. After the first week we have gotten into a schedule and routine and things are much better. She is a great baby. She is very content most of the time. For the past four nights I have only had to get up once during the night to feed her. It has been wonderful to get four to five hours of sleep straight between feedings!
After everything that I went through to get Adilynne here I am grateful for modern medicine and the doctors and nurses that I had while in the hospital. I am so grateful to be a mom to a beautiful, healthy baby girl. It is amazing how much I have loved her from the very beginning. We are glad you came to live with us Adilynne!
